My vision warps like I’ve gone underwater. I grip the gunwale tightly and try not to panic. Two blinks and my sight is clear again and I’m looking at the waves just as I was looking at them before.
A trick of the imagination, then. Nothing to get worked up about. I have been under a great deal of pressure. And if the sea looks brighter, sharper, wilder, it’s only because my heart is racing from a little burst of surprise, not because anything has changed.
I glance back at Oke, keeping a smooth smile on my face so he doesn’t notice my little… episode. He’s standing now, one hand still on the tiller. He’s loosened his hair and it whips behind him in the wind like a sail. I’d think he was enjoying himself if it weren’t for the steady drip of red on the floor and how he hunches over one side.
With care, I turn instead to the bow. I find my hands shake every time I think again of the wound I saw. There is something passing strange in how he might bear it but not die of it. Perhaps he is a hero of the gods—set above we usual mortals—or something more powerful and unnatural still. But no, I am only shaken up and imagining things.
Turning to face forward is not the relief I thought it would be, for an island rises before us that was not there before. And it is not the green glass nub I’d expected, though I could almost swear this is where that is located. No, the isle rises up like a fortress from the sea, white stone walls pocked with birds’ nests and green plants.
Carved into the white rock, and then marching out intothe water like a welcome party, are a series of stone statues colossal in size. Wind and waves have worn them so that their proud, human features have rounded and softened, but I get the terrible sense that they were once flinty and that that very sharpness remains in spirit and watches me. They vary in fashion of clothing and weapons as if marching through the generations from ages past until now.
“You have an army,” I say mildly.
“These are no friends of mine,” Oke objects absently as we sail past one of the statues. It’s only visible from the nose up—the pounding waves smash just under the vacant stone eyes. It’s missing an ear.
My eyes flick from face to face—some half-hidden by surf, others fully exposed. They are all watching me. Or they seem to be. But we are sailing toward a small bay nestled into the island that cradles a jetty. Perhaps these stone monstrosities were erected to purposely make visitors’ skin crawl. It seems a strange choice, but I can hardly blame the man bleeding in the boat for it. These statues are hundreds of years old, judging by their weathering.
And I should know about them. An island like this? Just off the coast of the Crocus Isles? It should have featured in my lessons as a child. I should have been taken to tour it and charged with guarding it and been given the heavy responsibility of keeping the statues from falling into greater disrepair.
I glance at Oke and he almost smiles. “You get used to their judging looks. Or at least, you promise them you’ll someday make them proud instead.”
“How long have you lived here?” I ask, keeping my tone light and trying not to shiver.
He waves a hand as if it isn’t important. “For as long as I’ve been the Fisher King.”
My heart is racing.
“And are there truly no other people here?”
He laughs softly. “Just the guardians, the birds, the souls of the dead, and me.”
My skin crawls with his words.
Well, I tell myself, you wanted vengeance on the gods. You might need to face a certain amount of strangeness to manage that. But it will be worth it to avenge the man who stole sugar buns for you when you were a child, stole your kisses thereafter, and made your throne so strong and sure that you never had need to doubt until the gods unleashed their cataclysm upon you.
I set my jaw, face forward, and concentrate on the task at hand.
“Mind the sail,” Oke orders me in the crisp tone I’m used to aboard ship. And before I realize I’ve jumped to obey, my hands are already at work, trimming sail and preparing to dock as he steers us into the jetty.
I’m busy for a few moments in the kind of way that makes worry impossible, and by the time my tasks are done and I can look up again, we’re pulling up alongside the dock—a feature as much in need of maintenance as everything surrounding Oke—and the whole bay is laid out around me in a glory of frothy waves, white gleaming sand, dancing tree limbs, and blank staring stone faces.
I’m so overwhelmed by the side-by-side glory and strangeness of this place that we’re almost fully docked before I realize there is someone waiting for us on the very end of the jetty and that my husband is frozen like one of the warrior statues as he stares at our welcomer.
The man is young—twenty summers, perhaps—and lithe of build. He lounges against one of the uprights of the jetty, standing on tiptoes on the final board of the structure, looking as at home as a cat walking on the top of a narrow wall. At his hip dangles a spatha sporting a guard studded with sapphires, and at his throat hangs a huge uncut moonstone on a golden chain. He winks at me as we grow close enough to see details, and his pointed chin and bouncing black curls combine to give him the look of mischief come to life… and to visit.
“Who is this?” I ask in an undertone, trying to tug down the rough tunic I’m wearing to cover my knees. It’s not working.
In contrast, the stranger is dressed in a short exomis of carmine silk, draped to reveal one creamy muscled shoulder. He’s knotted it almost indolently around his hips in a way that highlights what it’s meant to conceal. He’s well muscled despite his lithe figure, and clearly wealthy despite his slothful pose. That exomis is stitched with thread of gold and his wide belt is of fine-grained leather, sewn with seed pearls. Even at my finest, I would have struggled to find riches to match the ones this young man festoons about his person with seeming carelessness.
“A cousin of mine,” Oke says shortly. He seems displeased.
We draw up to the jetty and he begins to tie up without acknowledging the raised eyebrows of this “cousin” of his.
“No greeting? How terribly rude,” the cousin says. “You won’t ask me in?”
Oke gives him a speaking look. Blood or not, they are not friends.
“You may not set foot on my ground.”
